Since Hollywood has yet to make a good (or even decent) video game movie, that pretty much makes him top dog. Based on a light-gun arcade game—one of those ones in the movie theater lobby where one somehow acts out masculine shoot-em up fantasies while wielding a hot pink pistol—House of the Dead employs a ridiculous premise. Teens in search of a hot island rave ask a smuggler to take them to said rave. Of course, everyone on the island is dead. Because there are zombies.

The thing to know about Boll, who is German, is that he can keep making movies because of a German tax shelter loophole he takes advantage of. By getting his financing from the German government, he is essentially able to write-off most of the film’s losses. How a man smart enough to do that can continually make such unintelligible films is in itself a mystery.